Have been reading my new Heinlein book, "Tramp Royale," which is a nonfiction collection of articles about Heinlein's travels around the world. Upon his return from an around the world trip back in the 1950s, he discovers the whole McCarthy controversy has erupted in his absence. He comments upon it, and part of his comment follows:

...But two things struck me very forcibly about the matter, coming as I did direct from months abroad. First, it has been asserted repeatedly by several prominent journals that the "real" danger of the McCarthy fit lay in the friends it lost us abroad and the prestige it cost us.



This is nonsense almost complete. No one abroad was hurt--among our friends. It is true that the dust-up received much attention abroad and was used to make propaganda against us. But it was simply seized on as a chance to kick the Fat Boy by our enemies, who will do so on any excuse or without any excuse (as in germ warfare). Slandering Uncle Sam has gone on for years; the McCarthy row did not start it. For another reason which I will go into presently we should ordinarily pay no attention to what the press of any other nation says about us, but make our own decisions quite irrespective of what the world will think.

We may have good reasons of our own to curb this Senator's activities, but to do so because our enemies or our putative friends dislike what is being done inside the United States would be to decide our national policies on an emasculating "Nervous Nelly" basis. To our dreadful cost in blood and treasure we have for years been making crucial decisions on just this unsound basis, worrying about what other people might think of us instead of worrying about what is right and what is wrong. If we find it proper for reasons of justice to clip the wings of the ubiquitous gentleman from Wisconsin, then by all means let us do so--but let us not act from fear of what the neighbors may think!

For, I assure you, they don't give a tinker's dam what we think about their actions. American criticism of events in other countries--most particularly of anything as intimately domestic as the McCarthy row--is always rejected with indignation. Always ... if you can think of a single exception, please write and tell me.

Yet those selfsame citizens of second-rate powers, nations that have nothing standing between them and inundation by the communist flood but the strength of the United States, are almost unanimously ready to criticize Uncle Sugar on any score, ready to tell him what to do and how to do it, expecting him to foot the bill and most ready to vilify him if he fails to do just exactly what they advise. The most distressing truth that we learned in traveling around the world was how painfully few friends America has. We traveled entirely in territory and in ships of our allies in World War II, but only in Uruguay did we find a general feeling of friendliness toward the United States. Nowhere else!--not even in Australia.

Once or twice we heard kindly remarks about the United States when people learned that we were from the States, but dozens and endless times it was simply an opportunity to read us a lecture on the "sins" of our country. To be sure, the McCarthy uproar was often used as a weapon to lambast Uncle Sam, but any excuse was sufficient and it was usually something else. Baiting Uncle Sam is a favorite sport among our supposed friends.

For this reason I assert that it does not matter what others think of the McCarthy mess. It should not be a factor in our thinking about the matter.



Nothing much changes, does it?